


Creance

by Kryptaria



Series: The Gauntlet [2]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond (Movies), James Bond - All Media Types
Genre: Consensual Violence, Dark fic, Dom!Q, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, S&M, Sub!Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-12
Updated: 2013-01-12
Packaged: 2017-11-25 06:46:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/636215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kryptaria/pseuds/Kryptaria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The mission went wrong before Bond was even assigned to clean up the mess. In the end, all he could do was bring the bodies back -- including his own.</p><p>Sequel to Bal-Chatri, though it can be read standalone.</p><p><b>Creance:</b> A long lead used in the training of birds-of-prey.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Creance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [professorfangirl (lizeckhart)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizeckhart/gifts).



> Special thanks to BootsnBlossoms, Cousincecily, Honeybee221B, Jennybel75, Mitaya, and Snogandagrope for the beta and encouragement!
> 
> Dedicated to Professorfangirl, who's having that kind of day.

The cargo transport touched down hard, wheels skidding on the wet runway, jarring Bond against his harness. He clenched his fists and looked over at the cargo strapped down aft of the jumpseat.

 _No, not cargo_ , he finally allowed himself to think, seeing the long rectangular shapes not as cargo, featureless transport boxes, but as coffins. He allowed himself to think of the two men and one woman in those coffins — at least most of them, what the recovery team had been able to collect.

Thinking of them — thinking of the decontamination teams, the way 0033 had screamed into his faulty comms that his skin was slipping off, the way he’d pleaded for someone, anyone to come help him — Bond clenched his fists in the harness straps, though he kept silent. He was surrounded by people, from the cargo transport’s crew to the two reps from Station K, but no one approached closer than six feet, warned off by a silent, cold glare. Now, none of them dared look in his direction.

The mission had been a complete cock-up from the start. Station K — Kiev — had bled resources and agents into a disaster that had been a brilliantly executed trap. M had sent 0033 to salvage the operation, only to have 0033 caught. By the time Bond had made it there, one of the Station K safehouses had already received a warning package in the form of three left hands, one still wearing a wedding ring.

The rest of the parts had come over the next week, while Bond had worked tirelessly to try and find where the fuck they were being held. He was too late by less than an hour, but by then, he couldn’t imagine any of them would’ve wanted to be rescued alive. Even the HAZMAT team sent by Station K had been sick at what they’d found.

When the plane finally taxied to a halt, Bond unlatched his harness and went to stand with the coffins. He kept his balance as the transport shuddered violently before the rear cargo ramp began to descend.

Outside, thunder crashed.

There would be no burial with honours for these three agents. Illness, car accident on the M25, some other cause of death would be listed. Three quiet funerals, closed casket, all spaced out over days and in cemeteries far enough apart that no clever, nosy journalist would think to link them.

Three more points scored by the enemy. In the end, that was all these deaths would mean. Perhaps M would be called before some committee to explain. Most likely not.

The coffins were offloaded by cargo handlers with security clearance higher than most government desk workers. Another cold glare from Bond ensured that they did their jobs in respectful silence. He followed the last coffin down into the rain and watched as they were secured in the back of a lorry.

Then he walked away, ignoring whoever was shouting his name. He’d flown out of RAF Northolt more times than he cared to admit. He knew where to find someone low enough rank to bully into transporting him to Heathrow, where he’d left his car a lifetime ago.

He didn’t text Q to say he’d landed. Q had known the schedule before Bond even did, he was certain.

~~~

Bond slammed the door to his flat without pausing. He crossed from the foyer directly to the living room, where he opened the balcony door and went right back out into the rain. He was hyper-aware of everything, from Q sitting on the sofa, laptop on his knees and a startled look on his face, to the smell of cooking from two doors down.

Bond took a pack of cigarettes out of his jacket. He shielded them from the rain with his hand as he shook one free. He lit it and inhaled deeply, closing his eyes.

Hate, raw and fierce, welled up inside him. He’d go into the office in three or four days, maybe a week, maybe two, and he’d analyse every facet of the mission. He’d write up a report, and maybe someone would read it, but not a single fucking thing would change. Three people were still dead through a chain of events that would probably never repeat. England’s enemies, he knew, had infinite ways to destroy her servants and soldiers.

Bond went out into the rain and leaned against the balcony railing, hand cupped over the cigarette. Cars crawled below like glowing insects. He thought about how naturally he’d balanced atop a racing train. He thought about falling and how he’d hit the water and kept falling in a cloud of blood like fog. He wondered why the fuck he was still alive.

“Bond?”

The soft voice tore at him like razors, because it was gentle and concerned. Q was his anchor, the centre of his erratic orbit, the only thing he could count on in this fucked-up world, and he _hated_ that he had Q, and the three people who were dead had no one at all.

He lit another cigarette from the remains of the first and pitched the glowing butt out over the balcony. It would die in the rain or burn all the way down to the pavement. He watched it for as long as his eyes could pick out the tiny glow in the darkness.

“Bond.”

More sharply, this time. An edge of command, reassuring and solid, like the earth under his feet. But he wasn’t standing on the earth — only thin concrete and empty air.

He switched the cigarette to his right hand. With his left, he rubbed at the bullet wound, digging his fingers through his soaked shirt, hard into the scar tissue below.

His jacket was wet. Heavy. He remembered the weight as water pulled at him, at his jacket and shoes, tangling his limbs.

He should have died then, but the Royal Navy had taught him to treasure air, to fight the water’s suffocating, enticing embrace. If he’d died then, M would have sent someone else to rescue 0033, and maybe, just maybe, one life would have been claimed instead of three.

Bond pushed away from the railing, closing his eyes as he inhaled deeply, filling his lungs as if he were about to dive underwater. Over the rain, he could hear 0033’s screams, full of terror, yes, but also confusion — a child pleading with a parent to know what was happening, why, to make the nightmare stop.

_Oh, god, why? I can’t — it’s coming off — Why? — Oh, god, my skin! — Make it stop, please!_

Bond’s hand crushed the cigarette. Fire burst against his palm, stabbing into him like a knife, sharp and icy steel.

_“James!”_

Long, thin fingers, full of strength and certainty, wrapped around his wrist. Pried open his fingers. Over the memory of a dying agent’s screams, Bond heard Q telling him to let go.

The cigarette was gone. Q’s fingers circled the burn, unwantedly gentle, agonizingly kind.

“Come inside, Bond,” Q urged gently, his voice thin and taut like a pane of fragile glass. Bond snarled and wrenched his hand free, pacing inside not out of obedience but to get away. The last thing he wanted was to be coddled.

He didn’t want to be here, in London, in the luxury of a flat that wasn’t home, with Q — who _was_ his home. He went to the bar, thinking of 0033, young and fierce and full of the immortality that no agent ever had but they all needed to believe was theirs, or they’d never be insane enough to go out on another mission again. He poured a drink, ignoring Q’s hand on his arm, splashing expensive whisky over the edge of the glass. It dripped onto the bar and fell like blood on the carpet.

He wanted to be in Kiev, no longer three steps behind but ahead, on that bright edge between life and death, Q’s voice steady in his ear to feed him the intel he needed to face whatever twists and turns the mission threw at him until he was there _in time_ — until the only blood on his hands was the blood of the people who stood against England, who had carved apart his fellow agents.

“Bond,” Q said, and his voice wasn’t sharp and commanding or tight with threat. It was low and quiet and understanding, smothering water threatening to pull him down into oblivion, to help him forget.

He turned on his heel and threw the glass, a missile of heavy lead crystal that smashed into the wall, shattering into shards that embedded themselves in a fist-sized divot in the drywall. Deep forest green paint shattered, revealing the pale white chalk underneath like bloodless, dead flesh. Like white sand at the bottom of the river where he didn’t die.

Q’s hand caught his. Bond met his eyes. Saw in the hazel depths a complex whirlpool too deep to process, love and concern and fear twisted together, clawing at Bond’s heart, because underneath was the sort of strength that could stand up to even Bond’s madness. If he allowed it.

He twisted free, fists clenching, a bright burn of pain in his right palm shooting up his arm. It was a burst of lightning in the dark night of the wild highlands, illuminating the landscape of his raging thoughts for miles.

“Skyfall.”

Q recoiled from the safeword that Bond had never used. He backed away, holding his hands up, colour draining from his face. The years fell away to reveal the child Bond had mistakenly assumed him to be so long ago, before he’d learned to trust Q’s strength.

Hating himself even more, Bond walked out on the only person who meant a damned thing to him anymore.

~~~

The world had stopped, time’s passage marked only by the slow evaporation of rainwater from Bond’s clothes to the air. His skin was like ice long after his body warmth had dried the expensive wool on his legs and the finely combed cotton on his chest. The saturated, lined jacket took much longer. The holster pressed against his ribs was still wet but as warm as if he’d bled into the leather.

Q was still there.

Bond knew the flat as well as he knew his own body. He knew every creak of the floor, every whine of hinges, every metallic click of locks and latches that kept the world at bay. Q had left the living room once. Gone to the kitchen. Returned.

He hadn’t ventured down the hall to the bedroom. He hadn’t gone to the foyer and out to the hallway and down the lift and _away_.

Bond drew the Walther from under his jacket. The metal was familiar, a part of him. It recognised his cold hand, green lights waking from darkness despite the burn that throbbed on his palm.

It wasn’t faulty programming. Q would have anticipated agent injury when designing the biometric reader. He would have built in an automatic margin of error.

Bond’s finger fit perfectly against the trigger. The press would drive the grip back against his palm. The recoil would scrape the gently scored plastic grips over his skin. It would tear open the burn.

He rose, and movement caught his eye.

Pure reflex made him turn. Overtraining made him level the Walther at the mirror’s reflection, aiming at himself.

He looked like he was already dead.

He stared into his own eyes until he couldn’t face himself anymore — until all he saw was the small, perfect muzzle of the Walther. The green lights.

He turned away, heart racing, and threw the Walther at the mirror, shattering the glass into a star-bright rain that sliced his reflection into a thousand pieces. He watched, suddenly hungry for every jagged fragment of glass, as if he could gather them up with his hands and bleed out whatever was damaged and dead inside himself.

Slowly, he sat, not caring that he ended up on the floor instead of the bed. Every breath felt liquid and heavy in his lungs, bringing not peace but agony that burned behind his eyes and in his chest, clenching at his chest.

He forced himself to inhale against the pressure of air — of life.

Then he rose, watching the shifting reflection of the room in the long mirror-shards trapped in the antique frame.

He went to Q’s side of the wardrobe, where he reached up onto the high shelf. His fingers found leather, oiled soft, thin strands braided in an intricate, beautiful pattern. He took down the whip, feeling the heavy coils lay in his hands before he closed his fists tightly. Leather dug against the burn, and something in his chest loosened.

He turned, carrying the whip to the bedroom door. His left hand shook when he turned the knob; his right clung to the whip like a lifeline, as if letting go meant he would drown.

Q was standing by the open balcony door, staring out into the rain. Bond watched as his back tensed. His head came up fractionally. He was aware of Bond. Always, they were aware of one another, connected by fragile threads that nothing could break — not even Bond’s rage.

Bond scraped the toe of one shoe across the back of the other, working the saturated leather off his foot. The second was easier to remove. He watched as Q listened, identifying the sounds without turning around. He stood with no glass between him and the night, but he didn’t need a reflection to see Bond. To know where he was.

Breathing hard, Bond walked up behind Q. When Bond extended his right hand, carrying the whip, Q’s head turned to the side enough for Bond to see light reflect against his glasses. Q lifted his hand and took the whip, and only because of Q’s steadiness did Bond realize the trembling had spread through his whole body, a thin, nauseating mix of fear and self-loathing and despair all twisting in the empty void left behind in the wake of the mission.

He dropped to his knees with jarring force, dragging a deep breath into his lungs. He wanted a cigarette and a drink. He wanted the refuge of Q’s arms. He wanted to be _alive_ again.

With slow, measured steps, Q turned to face him. He’d changed clothes after coming home from the office. Barefoot, in comfortable jeans, he always looked so young and fragile.

Bond closed his eyes, resisting the urge to wrap his arms around Q’s legs and cling to him. He felt like just touching Q would shatter everything that was holding him together, breaking him beyond repair.

Underwater, light turned living skin to bloodless corpse-flesh. Arterial crimson became night black. Darkness came swiftly, thirty feet from day to twilight.

Even silent, even unmoving, Q kept the darkness at bay.

“All right,” Q said calmly.

Bond clenched his fists, feeling the first faint spark of relief.

~~~

At the first touch of cold metal on the back of his neck, Bond flinched violently. His eyes opened, staring at the saturated carpet just inside the balcony door. He heard the ringing hiss of metal shearing through thick fabric. The lapels of his wet jacket sagged as emergency scissors cut effortlessly into layers of wool and interfacing and lining. The thousand-pound suit scattered like mist, falling open, baring the cold, wet back of his shirt.

Bond’s exhale was a jagged, serrated blade pulled from his lungs, and the wash of blood that followed clouded his mind with confusion. At times like this, when he surrendered, Q would carefully take off each layer of clothing with the care a lover reserved for unwrapping a precious gift. Or Q would sit back and watch with unabashed avarice as Bond obediently stripped, opening each button and taking off each garment only when Q commanded.

This, though... This stripped him of all agency. There was no need for him to move. No need to lift his arms or shift from where he knelt. He only had to breathe and stay perfectly, obediently still.

His lungs burned. His eyes burned. His hand burned.

The shears came back to his neck, cutting through the lapel once more. This time, they followed a path down his left arm, and he shivered harder as the room’s cool air slipped over the wet sleeve of his dress shirt. His fingers twitched violently as the shears cut down over his forearm, followed by a spill of wet, heavy wool pooling against his hip and folded leg.

He blew out a breath and tossed his head like a restless horse at the final cut through his cuff, the blunt end of the shears curving against the back of his left hand.

There was no reassuring touch. Only a tug on the material, stripping it away. A negligent toss, and the wet half-jacket landed across the room, and then Q started on the other sleeve.

As he shivered beneath his wet shirt, the screams inside his mind began to recede.

Methodically, Q sliced through the collar and tie at the back of Bond’s neck. The tie slithered free of the shirt lapels to land on his lap, cool and damp. The cut continued in a patient sequence, open-and-close. Threads parted, destroyed by Q’s hand, exposing the icy skin underneath.

Drowning, Bond struggled to recall how to breathe.

When the shirt hung around him, Q rocked the shears under his belt. Long seconds passed as he forced the blades through hand-stitched calfskin. The final snap, when the last sliver of leather parted, was loud enough to make Bond flinch.

Still, Q didn’t soothe him. He pushed the blunt shears back against Bond’s side, this time under the waistband of his trousers, and sliced through. Two cuts and he was following the side of Bond’s thigh, where the material was pulled taut, easy prey for the blades.

Bond shivered more violently as the material fell, draped over the top of his thigh so precariously that he didn’t dare move. At Bond’s bent knee, Q pulled the shears away, only to replace them at his ankle, slicing up from the cuff. Then he went back once more, slipping the blunt end under Bond’s sock, cutting all the way down his calf, over his ankle, and down the outside edge of his foot. The material, fine silk and elastic, snapped and crumbled at the touch, a softly disintegrating mirror of Bond himself.

Behind Bond, Q shifted, patiently working the shears under the other side of the belt above Bond’s right hip, rather than pulling it free. It took endless seconds as Q sawed the blade-edges against the leather, but finally it fell open. Far more easily, he cut through the waistband and began to cut down over Bond’s right hip, down over his thigh, all the way down to his knee.

When Q set the blades to Bond’s right trouser cuff, another piece of Bond seemed to fall away. The ruined trousers shifted and slipped under his palms as his fingers twitched, wanting to clench into fists, wanting to curl and dig callused fingertips into burnt flesh. The trousers fell open. The other sock dropped to the carpet. Bond’s pants — left side and then right — until he was left wearing tatters and scraps.

Bond tried to remember how to breathe, but nothing worked anymore.

Q touched him then — finally, he touched Bond — a strong, cool hand on the back of his neck. He pushed, saying, “Move to the doorway, James.”

Bond’s exhale was choked. Eyes closed, he rested his hands on damp carpet and crawled out of the remains of his clothes. One step. two steps.

His fingertips found the concrete balcony as Q’s hand tightened to stop him.

With firm touches, Q guided him to take hold of the doorway, fingers clenching around the intricate moulding. His left hand worked into the space left by the hinges. If the door closed, it would break his fingers. He held on more tightly, wood digging painfully into his fingers as Q slid his hands up until he was kneeling off his heels, thighs and back in a straight line, reaching high over his head.

Then Q was gone.

Rain hit Bond’s face, his chest, his legs, blown into the flat on the high wind. A shudder passed through him, and he tightened his fingers against the moulding to steady himself. He could feel Q behind him, so distant that the space between them was like all the ice in the Arctic, but he was _here_ with Bond.

And then, without a word, without even a breath of warning, Q bridged that ice with fire as leather sliced a line of heat and agony across Bond’s shoulders.

Bond’s grunt was startled. Habit made him bite back a shout of pain. Training let him hide the sudden tears that burned at the backs of his eyes.

Everything snapped into sharp focus, the haze of defeat falling away.

He stared into the night. Took a breath.

This time, he heard the crack of the whip as Q lashed out again, a perfectly placed strike inches below the first, turning the line of heat into a choking, suffocating band that seemed to lock around his lungs.

He fought the pain. Pushed past it. He breathed, and the breath left in a rush as Q struck him again, fast and stinging. The rhythm of it was wrong, jarring Bond from his confidence, scattering his training like startled crows driven from a corpse.

Seconds passed as he flinched from the touch of the rain and wind, braced against the anticipation of pain.

The fire searing his skin began to ease, turning into a deep burn like lava. He lifted his head and breathed in, and this time, no strike interrupted.

Then, Q’s whip turned his exhale into a startled shout, the tip snapping hard around his ribs to his right side, slicing flames all the way through his body to his spine.

Bond gasped, body jerking back from the doorway in surprise. Then he lurched down as Q’s next cut snapped over his shoulder, onto his chest.

Three more times, Q struck, never pausing, gunfire-rapid, until Bond twisted to try and escape, though his hands never left the doorframe. He was gasping for air, fighting to breathe, refusing to drown. He remembered clawing for the light, that single-minded drive to live.

Slowly, shuddering, he leaned forward into the rain. He stared down at the balcony, feeling Q’s presence at his back, steady and calm and still.

He breathed, lifting his head again, and slowly knelt back down, sitting on his heels. His hands dragged over the moulding. The pain was still there — all of it — but it was something he could carry now, all the sharp edges blunted.

He felt Q behind him then. Instead of the whip, he held a blanket, which he draped over Bond’s stinging, abraded back. “Let go, James.”

 _James_ , he thought, feeling Q’s hand around his left wrist. Not ‘007’. Not ‘Bond’. Q was the only person left who called him by his name.

Q eased his fingers away from the moulding, away from the door, and wrapped the blanket over his left shoulder. “I’ve got you,” Q promised, taking hold of his right wrist.

No longer shivering, he turned, letting Q close the blanket around him.

“I’ve got you, James,” Q promised.

He leaned against Q, trusting his strength, and rested his head against Q’s shoulder. Finally, he could find peace in Q’s arms. The dead were finally silent again, at least for a little while.


End file.
